Comments on: Links 5/27/10http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/links-52710.html
Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and powerTue, 31 Mar 2015 20:47:40 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1By: Benedict@Largehttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/links-52710.html#comment-118944
Fri, 28 May 2010 04:28:22 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=10090#comment-118944Excuse me, but before everyone starts acting like fools over Obama “missing” Arlington (he is attending a similar service elsewhere), perhaps you all might check out the records of other recent Presidents of same. I know that Michael Savage said no one else has ever done this, but since when do we rely on Mr. Savage for historical accuracy?

Bush II missed several.
Clinton had a perfect record.
Bush I never made a single one of his four, attending a similar ceremony elsewhere once, and spending three in Kenneybunkport on vacation.
Reagan, everyone’s Mr. Perfect, missed four of his eight.

Don’t you all feel like fools now? You got chumped by Michael Savage.

]]>By: alex blackhttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/links-52710.html#comment-118936
Fri, 28 May 2010 03:55:44 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=10090#comment-118936So, DownSouth, if you agree with MLK’s words then you are saying than anyone who enters this country illegally (and by so doing is commiting and act of civil disobedience) should be willingly jailed.

Gee, and some people are getting outraged that some of them might only be returned back to their country if the’re caught!

Man, you are one HARSH dude! :-)

]]>By: aeoliushttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/links-52710.html#comment-118894
Thu, 27 May 2010 23:23:05 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=10090#comment-118894Unless I am just having a bad day, the article cited by Mark Thoma just does not compute.
No one reasonable disputes the fact that legal immigrants are a plus for this country. So quoting facts about this group seems so what.
It is the flood of illegal immigrants that has been flooding the US by way of the Mexican border
which is at issue here. So if one wants to show the economic advantages of this group please do so.
2.Arizona. It has been known since IIRC Heraclitus the Obscure that any action that goes too far to the extreme will cause an reaction in the opposite direction.
So one must look at Arizona’s actions within the larger scope of dreadful inaction on a national level for many years. It has brought the problem into a sharper focus then any other action in the past 20 years.
3.I am sorry that the high level of discussion this site had in the past is disappearing. Many responders seem to be as ill-informed as call-ins on Sports Radio.This seems true about the country of origin for the illegal Hispanics. Certainly many perhaps a third are from countries south of Mexico.In trying to check this out it quickly became appalling how poor data (at least that available on-line)is.
4 One thing not often mentioned is how unfair it is to the multitudes outside the Western hemisphere. Why should it be easier for say an Ecuadorian to become an illegal then it is for say a Philippino.
To be fair concessions for sections of our of our Southern border should be available for illegal immigration from other nations of the world.
]]>By: mwhttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/links-52710.html#comment-118860
Thu, 27 May 2010 20:11:01 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=10090#comment-118860Hi Yves,

The Edge 319 edition has an interview of Emanuel Derman, the author of ‘My Life as a Quant’. Very mild in tone, but quite revealing. Since I couldn’t figure out how to contact you, I am sending this as a comment here. The only relevance is this also appeared on line today.

]]>By: Bateshttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/links-52710.html#comment-118857
Thu, 27 May 2010 19:57:39 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=10090#comment-118857Unfortunately you are right. Most of the fools think they are watching a freakin football game; reds vs blues, and when it is over they will go home…fat, dumb, and more or less happy.

Meanwhile the theives in DC (both reds and blues) and Wall St are robbing them blind.

“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”
John Kenneth Galbraith

“That does not prove it failed. That does not prove that any other policy would have worked better.

All that “substance” proves is that it didn’t work as well as some people wished it to have.”

You have completely missed the point; Billy Blog’s article is claiming total success for the fiscal policy employed since the current debacle began. The truth is that for every dollar spent by US fiscal policy decision the GDP increase has been 20 cents. If you claim fiscal policy success with a losing dollar ratio of 5:1, at what point would you declare a fiscal policy a failure? If the damned government spent a dollar and got no GDP increase at all, would you classify that as fiscal policy failure? Well, I got news for you…When the fight to stop deflation is lost by the Fed you will see NEGATIVE GDP growth per dollar of fiscal policy funds misallocation…and make no mistake, all that fiscal policy has accomplished so far is misallocation of taxpayer money. Of course, the fraudsters on Wall St have a different point of view…They have made out like bandits on the taxpayers dollars via DC fiscal policy.

]]>By: MyLessThanPrimeBeefhttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/links-52710.html#comment-118829
Thu, 27 May 2010 18:17:32 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=10090#comment-118829So now they have Hubble peeking at people playing pacman video games?
]]>By: itad?http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/links-52710.html#comment-118827
Thu, 27 May 2010 18:11:46 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=10090#comment-118827The Improbability of Life

So, you have the financial black hole created when the old families promoted agency to implement family law globally, cutting off access to the voltage presented by natural new family formation, which feeds small business in the food chain, increasing efficiency in the short-term to maximize relative revenue, through the protected labor (education/healthcare) agency nexus, which has a negative relationship with economic profit, hiding true costs with GDP, which places government in the numerator, adds consumption instead of subtracting it, and replaces real investment, which cannot be measured directly, with government supply-side demand, exponentially driving up false short-term revenue and hiding long-term costs, within artificial demographic acceleration, trying to stay ahead of exponential collapse, in an efficiency relativity circuit, of virtual expansion into a hidden derivative insurance market, carving out the long-term labor economy, and replacing it with economic slave ownership within geographic camps, through the exploitation of “illegal” immigrants, dependent H1B1s, and outsourcing, becoming increasingly dependent on efficiency, in order to hide from evolution, exactly what you would expect gravity to do.

For those who have not had a chance to connect the dots, below $65/barrel is the solvency trap. Above $65 is the liquidity trap, in which unprotected labor has been fully discharged within the efficiency relativity circuit, leaving only the protected labor conduit (fuse) into the center of the nucleus (bomb), for further liquidation. Agency must now break all internal promises, resulting in gravity turning in on itself, which is the behavior you are beginning to observe among the participants, which will increase along an exponential curve, as the container shrinks and the pressure increases. The walls are caving in, due to demographic backlash. The higher the price, the faster taxpayers are liquidated; the lower the price, the faster governments become insolvent. Either way, the cliff approaches. $65 is the inherent momentum of the system. The brake is shorted to the accelerator.

The voltage potentials add up to 0. The efficiency relativity circuit is balanced by the effectiveness relativity circuit, and the latter can step off the fulcrum at will. Whether you diffuse the bomb for them, or let it blow up, is up to you. A bridge to somewhere, instead of to nowhere, will be required, and gravity has absolutely no idea where it is going. It doesn’t have a steering wheel. Gravity is not personal; it just is.

Passive investors, represented by agency, whether they recognize it or not, are seeking to maximize return on no work. In order to be an active investor, individual investors must be able to affect corporate agency, in a feedback loop, which is ruled out by Graham’s closely held utility pyramid structure. The market is not allocating capital. The market is measuring how fast the passive investors are bankrupting themselves as a group, in both directions, to feed gravity. There is a time to feed gravity, a time to starve it, and a time to leave it alone.

The market is now a ward of the taxpayers, which must accelerate debt, in order to increase taxes, on themselves, being locked into spending by GDP, economic activity they can see, chasing money with debt, and getting exponentially farther behind everyday.

When you rule everything else out, what remains is the answer, no matter how improbable, plus the entire rest of the universe, which is full of improbabilities / demand yet to be solved / supplied, in a relative recursive open loop. The vortex is whatever you choose it to be. The fulcrum of fulcrums, the helix of helices, in the symbiotic relativity circuit, will balance, regardless of where you place the looking glass.

Choose … and learn, to have confidence in the unknowable, by doing … and watch out for turtles. They move very slowly when you are watching them, but very quickly when you are not, because they can ride the current, beyond the knowledge of gravity. Play with circuits, look at the economy. Play with circuits, look at the economy. The turtle carries the looking glass, which is why the rabbit has no idea where it is going, but expends a tremendous amount of energy getting there.

So, we’re talking and she says, “I’m paying $60 every three days to put gas in my truck (SUV); the price of gas is ridiculous.”

]]>By: NOTaREALmericanhttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/links-52710.html#comment-118820
Thu, 27 May 2010 18:06:31 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=10090#comment-118820The planet is a planet of humans. At what point do we stop breeding.

Does population control = anti human?

Your argument for ever increasing population in the US is like the perpetual growth arguments. At some point less is good too.

]]>By: DownSouthhttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/links-52710.html#comment-118814
Thu, 27 May 2010 17:58:08 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=10090#comment-118814As it now stands, the only people who benefit by keeping illegals illegal are wealthy individuals and corporations who hire them to do work at below market wages.

Cynthia,

It’s always been that way:

There was no question among Anglo settlers in South Texas that a major asset of the region consisted of its cheap labor pool. Agribusinessmen, their chamber of commerce, and local county newspapers constantly emphasized this great advantage of the area. One land prospectus in the Winter Garden region, for example, pushed the “sell” in a succinct statement: “The cheapest farm labor in the United States is to be had in this section.” Newspapers like the “Galveston News” and the “Corpus Christi Caller” likewise invited prospective agribusinessmen and industrialists to invest in South Texas, citing the presence of ample cheap labor. So cheap was Mexican labor, in fact, that the introduction of mechanization on commercial farms was effectively retarded by the higher costs and less profitable returns from machines. The degree to which these wages were depressed surfaces clearly when the Mexican wage scale in Texas is compared with those in neighboring states. According to the information compiled in a 1926-1927 study of Mexicans in the United States, the average wage of Mexican laborers working cotton in the southern and southwestern states was lowest in Texas. A Mexican picker working Texas cotton received a daily wage of $1.75. In Arizona the Mexican cotton picker received $2.75; in California, $3.25; in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, $4.00.

There was, of course, a sharp distinction between “white wages” and “Mexican wages.”
–David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986